Hacker Burak develops new layer 2 ‘Brollups’ for Bitcoin’s DeFi

Bitcoin developer Burak is building Brollups – a layer 2 solution to expand Bitcoin’s DeFi capabilities. Brollups will be managed by designated “operators” acting as liquidity providers. The operators will also maintain the system’s state by regularly chaining Bitcoin transactions. 

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According to Burak, transactions executed on a Bitcoin Virtual Machine (BVM) do not need new tokens or disruptive hard forks. Burak explained that Brollups will leverage Bitcoin’s existing infrastructure. Brollups, currently in the design phase, has received praise from the Bitcoin community for its strategic focus on native integration. According to Burak, Brollups will support most DeFi applications on Bitcoin when it launches. 

Burak exploited the Lightning Network                

The hacker’s exploitation of Lightning Network’s vulnerability in October 2022 sent shockwaves through the Bitcoin community. He accomplished this with a unique 998-of-999 multi-signature Taproot transaction. While Bitcoin protocol rules identify the transaction as valid, a flaw was exposed in how some nodes in the Lightning Network processed information. 

As a result, Burak’s transaction caused a temporary desynchronization across the network, leading to an emergency update for node operators in the Lightning Network. The harmless transaction only cost $5, and no money was stolen. Burak announced the exploit on X, formerly Twitter. 

“I just did a 998-of-999 tapscript multisig, and it only cost $4.90 in transaction fees.”

However, industry stakeholders agreed that this incident was likely an unintended consequence of a recent Taproot upgrade. Importantly, the incident highlighted the need for continuous testing and maintenance of robust systems like the Lightning Network. 

As a result, Burak came up with a solution – Brollups, which he says can integrate perfectly with the existing Bitcoin network.

Burak discusses Brollups in detail

According to the Bitcoin hacker, one of the most unavoidable characteristics of rollup (ZK and optimistic) solutions is the minimal requirement for trust. “At least one of the system’s participants has to be honest to maintain security and reliability while preventing the system’s exploitation by malicious actors,” explains Burak. He also added that these principles apply to Brollups. 

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The Bitcoin hacker claimed that Brollups will keep transactions efficient and lean. He explained that transactions, known as “entries,” can interact with existing smart contracts or create new ones. According to him, the entries are stored using a special encoding structure that packs bit-by-bit data tightly together. 

“The payload is split into 520-byte chunks and stored directly in the witness.” 

– Burak  

According to the Bitcoin hacker, Brollups combine signatures from multiple entries into one signature, which is used to verify the validity of a batch of transactions at once. He added that doing so will improve processing speed while reducing the data footprint. 

Burak concluded that the “entry signing session” that happens in collaboration with a Brollups operator sums up specific pieces of data to ensure proper verification of entries before they are added to the system. 

Cryptopolitan reporting by Collins J. Okoth